Lawrence advances to main bracket
LAWRENCE >> Michael Scardelletti and the seniors on the Lawrence High boys soccer team realize that it’s now or never.
Their senior season with the Cardinals has not gone the way they had hoped, yet, with a couple weeks left in the regular season and tournament play beginning, there is still time to make something of their final campaign.
So coach Keith Fithen’s team is hoping to finish the season with the same promise it showed back in the beginning of the 2016 campaign when it won two of its first four games.
Down two goals in the first 20 minutes of their Mercer County Tournament play-in with Ewing High at Bill Zimmer Field Tuesday, things did not look good for Lawrence.
Rather than go into a funk, the Cardinals sized up their situation and found ways to score and win. Three second-half goals turned the game completely around as 16th-seeded Lawrence defeated the 17th-seeded Blue Devils, 4-2, to advance to play at top-seeded defending champ the Pennington School at 6 p.m. Thursday.
“The goal we scored late in the first half, that was the turning point,” Scardelletti said. “After that goal, I saw the team pick up. When we came out following halftime, we played with a lot more confidence.”
In doing so, the Cardinals won consecutive games for the first time this season to improve to 5-10 heading into their game at Tom Liwosz Field against the unbeaten Red Raiders (11-0-2).
“The spirit of the team is so much better now,” Scardelletti said, thinking back to Lawrence’s struggles in mid-season when it won only one of nine games, including a six-game losing streak. “We’re starting to pick up the pace and our intensity. I could tell we were eventually going to turn things around.”
The same was true Tuesday even after Ewing senior Nick Wood converted leads from classmates Kyle Ficci and Alec Jurczynski. Suddenly, the visitors had a two-goal edge with which to work.
“I think part of it was we wanted to make up for our tough loss Monday night,” Wood said, referring to his team’s 5-4, double-overtime home loss to Allentown. “We were up, 2-0, at one point in that game as well. It seems like we put in two, then fall apart.”
That was not exactly the case as the Blue Devils (2-11) held the Cardinals in check for much of the first half before Scardelletti set up Ethan Crutchley for the home team’s first goal with a long, curving serve with 8:53 left in the half.
The score stayed at 2-1 Ewing until Scardelletti followed up a drive by Gabe Baffuto by knocking in the tying goal 6:40 into the second half.
The Lawrence players seemed to gain confidence from there on. Even though the Blue Devils ran a frustrating offside trap and got 14 saves from athletic junior goalkeeper Kameron Clark, the home team was able to take the lead with 25:28 to go when Chris Velasco tracked down and converted a ball that defenders Tyler Hughes and Baffuto had played forward.
Ewing tried to even the score, but nine saves by Cardinals senior goalkeeper Jake Ari froze the score until Luke Annand kicked in a rebound of a Baffuto shot which Clark had stopped with 8:53 to play. NWood 2 (E), Crutchley, Scardelletti, Velasco, Annand (L). Ficci, AJurczynski (E), Scardelletti, Baffuto 2, THughes (L). 11 (E), 18 (L). Clark 14 (E), Ari 9 (L).